- Slate asks: "Can a woman be a great American novelist?" Especially interesting to read in conjunction with a Twitter conversation earlier this week between Ally Carter, Maureen Johnson, John Green and several other YA authors, lamenting the curse of the "chick lit pink cover" and its effect on literary awards.

Does anyone remember Claudia's dorky sister Janine, who stood in the hallway looking at their sign, pondering whether "Babysitter's Club" needed an apostrophe? Does that question still bother anyone else? No? Just me? Okay then. Nothing to see here.

Kate is the author of After the Fall, coming January 24, 2017 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A former teacher and grant writer, she now owns a treehouse-building business in the Ozarks and hosts the Badass Ladies You Should Know interview series.

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I want to respond to Ross as the Hunger Games director. (And there are going to be some spoilers for Pleasantville in here, fair warning) Someone else made a similar comment to me about how the world in HG and Pleasantville were total opposites, but I think it's not quite as far off as it seems. Pleasantville is actually an example of a dystopia, when you think about it - no emotions, teens and women all living in oppression. Sure, it was supposed to be based on the 1950s, but it was also supposed to be based on TV, where someone else was controlling all their emotions. And those scenes where each character came into their own? They were pretty powerful, emotional scenes. I think any director can point a camera at some special effects in an arena. What will really make a great director for HG is someone who can bring the very internal struggle that Katniss faces on the page to life. So I think someone with a background more similar to Ross's might actually work well.

OK, and that's all I wanted to say. Apparently, it was quite a lot. :)